The Mortgage and Landlord Possession Statistics bulletin (found here) presents key statistics on possession activity in the courts of England and Wales with accompanying commentary and data. The bulletin provides a summary overview of the volume of cases dealt with by these courts over time, with statistics also broken down for the main types of case involved.
As part of our wider work on improving data visulisation and accessibility, we have developed a data visualisation tool which sits on top of the data underlying the publication and its associated csv files - the tool provides users with the capability to:
interrogate the published information easily, and at a lower level of detail, e.g. by Local Authority
access and produce a range of charts specific to their requirements.
We welcome any comments you have about the data visualisation tool, including your views on how the tool can be improved
Rita Kumi-Ampofo, Acting Head of Access to Justice: CAJS@justice.gov.uk
Next release The data visualisation tool is scheduled to be updated on 13th February 2025 to include data up to the period of October to December 2024.
The tool displays the latest published statistics on possession actions by County Courts and repossessions by Count Court Bailiffs in England and Wales.
It allows users to investigate aspects of Mortgage and Landlord possession activity, such as:
The tool also allows data to be interrogated at lower levels than is presented within the publication e.g.
To help understand the terminology, a glossary is available alongside a notes and context page which provides extra infomation accessible form all areas of the tool.
The data within the tool are sourced from the accompanying csv files published alongside the Mortgage and Landlord Possession Statistics Quarterly (see link above), with the exception of the geolocation data for the courts and local authority houshold projections, which are publically available.
The tool allows you to explore the available data in a dynamic way. To do thus, each page has filters on the right hand side or top of the page. The exact filters vary from page to page, but some are:
Below are some considerations which users should bear in mind when interpreting the figures and trends covered by this data visualisation tool.
The figures in the bulletin are based on statistical data extracted from the Case Management Information System (a data warehousing facility drawing data from county court-based administration systems) and data derived from claims made via Possession Claims Online (PCOL).
The statistics in the latest quarter are provisional, and are revised the following quarter to take account of any late amendments to the administrative databases.
Some of the data in the mortgage and landlord dataset are based on small numbers, for example, local authority level mortgage repossessions in small population areas. This is particularly the case when absolute numbers are represented as a rate per 10,000 households as with the mapped data. Caution is advised when using data calculated for low-population local authorities (i.e. City of London or Isles of Scilly), as small changes in numbers of possession actions can change the rate per 100,000 to a large degree. Care should therefore be taken when making any conclusions based on the trends presented.
Geographical area level data is based on the defendant's address postcode, and therefore does not necessarily represent the actual property the possession action is against. This is more likely to be a factor in mortgage cases where defendant address can correspond to a second home or buy-to-let mortgage.
The Sankey diagram is based on progression statistics from claim to possession action. A claim is recorded as “no order”, “no warrant” or “no repossession” when no action of this type has been recorded in the case management system. Due to the nature of civil claims, claims can be settled out of court at any time, or a claimant may choose to withdraw their claims. Therefore, a “no action” result cannot be used to calculate claims outstanding.
There may be a small proportion of claims which proceed to warrants or repossessions without an order recorded in the system; for simplicity, this distinction is not made in the diagram.